August 03
The Portrait of a Propagandist as an Artist
The Southern Weekend, in it's typical straight-faced celebrity freak show style, did an interview with Liu Zhongde, a former Minister of Culture and Director of the Central Propaganda Department. Let's again hope that ESWN will pick this up; I'll just present the freakiest parts of it -- namely, how the quirks of one art-minded Party bureaucrat could affect the tastes of a complete country, a complete generation.
Liu, who retired from both posts in 1998, made a name in the popular press earlier this year when he blasted the Chinese American Idol copycat show, Super Girls. "Super Girls is not art; it's a disgrace to art" was his famous quote back then, and he sticks with it. The thing about this propagandist is, he's the hands-on type, a self-proclaimed musician. In his years in power he was responsible for censoring art -- music, comic talk shows, etc. For whatever he killed as "unhealthy" or "obsene", he has a theory of why he did it by comparing it with his own work.
Throughout the interview he talks about his own undying love for "true art" -- namely, opera. He made the statement against Super Girls when he was writing a Chinese version of the opera "Swan Lake". His argument was, "Swan Lake is fine art; it's national art." Super Girls is not Swan Lake, so it's crap. It's a disgrace to art.
Fortunately for Super Girls fans, what could have been enough reason to kill the whole show back in Liu's time (1992- 1998), now only raises a few brows in the popular press and maybe some faint, sympathetic whines among similarly retired bureaucrats.
As the interview proceeds, we get to learn that Liu was also responsible for suppressing the popularity of Hong Kong and Taiwan pop stars in the early 1990's, for the reason that "they have taken over all our TV shows and stages." Surprisingly, he admits his admiration for the late Taiwanese pop idol Deng Lijun (Teresa Teng), although he does say "some of her songs are unhealthy". As the country's art-chief, he even thought of inviting her to the mainland to perform. His ass was saved by her sudden death in 1995, after which Taiwanese newspapers identified her as a secret KMT agent. Just imagine that she did make it to Beijing, and then the story broke. Haha. We would have suffered from a lot fewer of Liu's other quirks.
Indian-born maestro Zubin Mehta, on the other hand, is much more fortunate. In 1998, Mehta was picked to conduct the Forbidden City version of the opera Turandot, but Liu twice denied Mehta approval to do it in Forbidden City, on the grounds that "somebody (in the audience) may drop a cigarette butt and burn the whole place down." According to Liu, on Mehta's third plea with him, the Maestro professed his love for China -- "he said he loved China very much; when former premier Zhou Enlai visited India, Mehta was holding up a banner in the street welcoming him." and that was enough to persuade Liu.
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